Elevating Student Voices: Levels of Community Participation in Higher Education
A new model for universities and students’ unions to move towards genuine collaboration with students.
The problem with participation
With the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), universities and institutions have had to move towards measuring and assessing student participation and co-design. The effect of this is that, compared to a decade ago, Higher Education (HE) today is full of terms like “engagement,” “active learning”, and “participation,” which are used to paint a picture of lecture halls brimming with enthusiastic students.
But do these phrases – present in almost all Education Strategies – really capture how students interact with their educational experience? Do they serve us (educators and students alike), or simply help to mask the growing engagement challenges students face across the sector, particularly in relation to cost-of-living and caring commitments?[1]
This blog aims to unpick some of the terminology and language used around participation in HE. We will try to make sense of words such as consultation, co-design, and co-production. The hope is that by critically examining participation terminology, we can navigate beyond superficial engagement metrics and misuses of language, offering a deeper understanding of how students learn, think, and contribute to the classroom and beyond.
Our proposed model (an update to Arnstein’s ladder of participation) seeks to build a language of engagement that considers what these words mean for the students who experience them, including power dynamics, autonomy, and the effort required from both educators and students at each level of participation.
Arnstein’s ladder of participation
The ladder of participation, developed by Sherry Arnstein in the 1960s, has been widely used to understand and increase participation in decision-making processes.[2] In Arnstein’s 1969 paper, she wrote about citizen participation in planning processes in the United States and used the metaphor of a ladder to describe different levels of citizen participation. Each rung on the ladder represents the amount of agency, control and power citizens have – this increases as you progress up the ladder (from bottom to top).
A new version of the ladder
While the ladder of participation has been widely used, we wanted to update and simplify the model, making it relevant for Higher Education. We have built on Arnstein’s original ladder and Think Local Act Person (TLAP) Ladder of Co-Production to propose a new version that we’re calling Levels of Community Participation.
This is not meant to replace Arnstein’s model but suggests new levels of participation to help those working with students (and students themselves) move towards meaningful forms of collaboration.
Introducing Levels of Community Participation
Five levels
Our proposed model contains the following levels:
Level 0: Manipulate: Students are misled about their involvement. You involve them in the process but ignore their input.
Level 1: Communicate to: Information is communicated to students, but they have no influence over decision making.
Level 2: Design for: Students are invited to provide feedback and may be allowed to influence decision making.
Level 3: Design with: Students are invited to collaboratively design improvements, enabling them to have influence and/or control over decision making.
Level 4: Led by: Students are given control over designing and delivering improvements, but universities can influence decision making.
Each level represents distinct interactions between staff and students interact to improve the university experience. As you ascend from level 0 to level 4, students gain greater influence and control over decision making. It’s also important to note that both groups’ involvement (in terms of time and effort) changes as you go up the levels.
Participation and influence across levels
To understand the evolving dynamics of influence and engagement, we'll unpack the key interactions within each level, where students and staff collaborate in different ways.
Each level of participation categorises how staff and students interact, and outlines who controls decision making processes. In turn, each level is broken down into one or more approaches to provide further detail on how these levels can be applied in practice. For example, “Level 1: communicate to” contains two approaches “Educate” and “Inform”.
Level 0: Manipulate
Approach 0.1 Mislead:
About this approach: Misleading students (intentionally or unintentionally) by inviting them to participate in plans, projects or decision making but ignoring or devaluing their contributions.
What role do students play in decision making: Student input into decision making is ignored or devalued.
An example of this approach: A student is invited to represent the “student voice” in a faculty advisory committee. Their involvement is tokenistic, and their views are largely ignored, or seen as less important than other members of the committee.
Level 1: Communicate to
Approach 1.1: Educate:
About this approach: Students are helped to understand university services, processes or activities, including how they can benefit from them. University staff may try to influence how students behave.
What role do students play in decision making: Students have no influence over university decision making.
An example of this approach: Staff want to reduce the number of students submitting late assessments. They produce guidance for students to clarify the assessment timescales and provide reminders throughout an assessment window to help students meet the timescales.
Approach 1.2: Inform:
About this approach: Students are informed about university services, processes, or activities and are given information on how they work. Sometimes university staff may tell students what decisions have been made and why.
What role do students play in decision making: Staff do not invite or listen to student’s feedback. Students have no influence over decision making.
An example of this approach: Students are told about a new curriculum change, including when it will happen and what it means for them. Staff explain why the change is being made but students are not given any opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed changes.
Level 2: Design for
Approach 2.1: Consult:
About this approach: Students are invited to submit feedback by (for example) filling in surveys or attending meetings. Staff may not inform students how their feedback has been used.
What role do students play in decision making: Students have limited opportunities to influence decision making.
An example of this approach: Students may be invited to participate in a survey about a proposed curriculum change, but the results of the survey may not be used to inform the final decision. Staff want to know what students think, without making any commitments what they might change.
Approach 2.2: Engage:
About this approach: Students are given regular opportunities to express their views and be listened to. Compared to consultation, this will involve a two-way dialogue between students and the university.
What role do students play in decision making: Students may be able to influence some decisions, depending on what the university will allow.
An example of this approach: Students are invited to attend a series of events (both online and in-person) to discuss proposed curriculum changes. Staff discuss the reasons why they want to change the curriculum and ask students how this might impact them. The feedback provided by students is reviewed by staff and used to inform their decision making. Staff then share their decision (and the reason for it) with students.
Level 3: Design with
Approach 3.1: Co-design:
About this approach: Students are involved in creating improvements to university services, processes or activities based on their ideas and experiences.
What role do students play in decision making: Students can influence decision making but aren’t involved in implementing any proposed changes.
An example of this approach: Students are invited to participate in the development of a new assessment method. They work with faculty staff to make recommendations about how the new assessment method should work. Faculty staff listen to and discuss students’ recommendations but are responsible for making the final decision. Students are not involved by faculty staff adopting or delivering the new assessment method.
Approach 3.2: Co-production:
About this approach: University staff and students work together in an equal relationship (equal partnership and equal benefit) to design and deliver improvements to university services, processes or activities.
What role do students play in decision making: Students share decision making authority with staff.
An example of this approach: Students collaborate with departmental staff as part of the same team to design and deliver a wellbeing event for undergraduate students. Responsibility is shared amongst the team and everyone has equal input into making key decisions about how the event will work. Staff and students work together to facilitate and evaluate the success of the wellbeing event.
Level 4: Led by:
Approach 4.1: Community led:
About this approach: Students are empowered to take the lead and given control over creating improvements to university services, processes or activities.
What role do students play in decision making: University staff can influence decision making.
An example of this approach: Students are empowered by staff to lead the re-design of an existing, communal study space. Departmental staff provide a catalogue of approved furniture suppliers and a budget to fund the work. Staff input into the design by ensuring that any changes meet health and safety policies. Students develop their final design, with a costed list of furniture and other items needed to create their preferred study space. Staff commission facilities to make the required changes and students work with them to ensure their designs are delivered.
Promoting new conversations
By separating the interactions between staff and students, the new model seeks to create a more inclusive, equitable, and innovative way for students to participate. We also hope this will promote conversations which lead to:
Increased student engagement: When students are given a meaningful opportunity to participate in the decision-making process, they are more likely to be engaged in their education.
Improved student outcomes: Research has shown that student participation in curriculum design and other aspects of the educational experience can lead to improved student outcomes, such as higher grades and greater satisfaction with their education.
More creative and innovative solutions: When students and faculty members work together to develop solutions, the results are often more creative and innovative than when faculty members work alone.
A more equitable and inclusive educational experience: When students have a voice in the decision-making process, it helps to create a more equitable and inclusive educational experience for all students.
So, what now?
The inclusion of these five new levels of community participation is designed to recognise that students are no longer passive consumers of their education, but are (and are encouraged to be) active participants throughout their journey at university. From curriculum design to mental health support, students are increasingly engaged to provide their feedback, share ideas, and collaborate with staff on projects. Our hope is that this updated model can be used to assess the level of student participation in curriculum design, assessment, and other aspects of the educational experience.
In our experience of working across different universities, there are examples where this language is unintentionally misused (due to confusion or a lack of understanding), and some instances where there is intentional misuse. Misusing language (intentionally or unintentionally) risks disengaging students, damaging relationships and reducing trust between students, staff and the wider university.
We propose this model in an attempt to clarify the language and approaches that universities can take, giving staff a simple guide to understanding how to involve students in their work.
Genuine collaboration requires a commitment to student voice and agency. However, as we discussed here, there are a number of barriers to engaging in meaningful collaboration, in particular, a lack of time and resources (for both staff and students). It is perhaps important to stress that we aren’t saying that any of the levels (apart from Level 0) are ‘bad’, and that those stages in Level 1 and Level 2 are equally valid and play a clear role in student participation.
To this end, the new levels above are designed to simplify these activities for students and staff wanting to audit participation and collaboration activities. The Levels of Community Participation is intended to provide a framework for universities and students’ unions to move towards genuine collaboration.
Final thoughts
Moving up the Levels of Community Participation has the potential to transform higher education for both students and staff. So next time you need to include students, instead of presenting them with a fait accompli, give them more meaningful opportunities to participate in the decision-making processes. While there are challenges to overcoming the barriers to co-creation, there are some successful examples of co-design, co-production, and community-led co-creation at Warwick, Salford, and Edinburgh.
Our new model is still a work in progress. Please let us know what you think and how we can improve it. Feel free to get in touch to discuss this further.
References
[1] Students’ engagement with their studies has largely bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, says new report | Advance HE (advance-he.ac.uk)
[2] S. Arnstein, (1969), A ladder of citizen participation, Journal of the American Planning Association, 35 (4), pp. 216–224.